Two Poems by Elizabeth McDaniel


AFTER HOURS

The walls purr with royals
an ancient stain deepening
plebian yet velvet
the page plays Messiah
a new one astonished
spinning the gardener’s daughter
thought pious
an extravagant axis
her skirts dispersed in the dark
smiling a crease in them
all day alterations
of favorite seasons
turn colors and a key
expands the room

*

The rake has a heart-shaped head
groomed a spell
by his gorgeous godmother
he calms his respect
beneath a petticoat
when the count comes
there must be one less
lover et. cetera

*

A sweet one built like an organ
crowned on the female couch
she has chained the sun to serve her
exciting arms muscle or wing
wring celestial oils
soon to amuse shapes happy in heat
made beautiful by faux vixen curtains

*

The plow and the song
gravediggers take off their clothes
exalting modest lower regions
not the mourning sort
they hum fake labor
as if for a living
louder lips kiss or bite
in love with a hungry box

*

Has she come to feed or honor
pleased if the fancy lady
would show her bowl
in a whiter pass
wasted all on sugar
chirping then and not even in season

*

Who was it swallowed
the sea’s thorny leak
on the radio delivering waves
Spleen in d minor
ennui meaning nil or lorn
only the born have names
rescued from lovesick rock
one swam up to my mat
silverfish cheek to cheek
please don’t fill me with piety
and nothing to kneel on here
the sky dark and long

*

Captains spill their glows
on each other
careful not to make a tear
in the weather
stroked and they go
as far from prick as some
more suitable volcano
smoke strolling agreeable air

*

Plunging upward they try
for the magnet’s pretty face
glutted moon she ran
off with a tumbleweed
as darkly the sun dropped
its dress to the gutter
a share of heaven
sequined in blinding harvest
platinum cads built
for thrills enjoy
little swift apostles

*

Having outgrown thrusting this evening
two play with their faces
until the life of quietness is envious
without that normal mellow flow
past warming members
solemn explorers of a crag
no stones apart from feet
even the smallest hold

*

A day mostly pompless
safely inside blazing domes
the pages of my books
replaced with sheets
of blank music
torch them all
I’ll close my eyes
cling to you to keep
cool sleeping muse

*

What do you like about it?
that we may be suspended
honey on our shoes
the belt shakes all night
when we remember
feeling better

*

Ashamed to say my genius
rolled gently downhill
who learned poverty
in raving barrels
listless riches embalmed
for eternity as long
as the race survives
or the tall gods fall
for fair imitations

*

Famous in spirit
laurels braided in
everyone’s brain
a tiny crawling lyre
where you sometimes
went bald
hurt then it drifted
they rub the place

*

A risk in each ear
to release nervous play
of our looms
easy with the throaty sibyl
her voice is the shape of her face
a foreign tongue
mad to travel
one more leg to go
just about everywhere

*

Exhausted pruners
trim a maze
sprinkling the unspontaneous dead
as room temperature nurses
tears fall on their arms
swept into bins
for what’s deemed
the next stuck
snow day

*

Awake! blown hair in banners
excellently lifelike
they’ll whip up
natural disasters
dispatching their finest
storms abroad
to sow an improbable rainbow
hear them whistle
as if immortal


Moody Elizabeth

Lizbit


Some explosion involving
a woman’s prodigious legs
& before you know both
are home bound

But what’s wrong with bumping
your head on the ceiling
of that tarantella one asks
the other
in plaster tiara

*

Lit

A crumbling volume
with no ambition
long broken diction
in the tradition of
a crooked spine

A book is not a toy
until used
or occupied
in the margins

*

Wiz

Too rude to come in
through the door
too nude in her window
down her hall one imagines
what talk?

Quoting soft-core philosophy
brush it
yank it
roll the baby up in the rug
& stretch at dusk for one
explicable star

*

Good Queene Bess

Pulled hair
latent or in habits
a defiant variety
sisters of the night table

Is charm amiss
playing on some stranger’s face
like moss on a walk?
a discreet exit
& here comes a new Liz
to amuse in curly pajamas

*

Babs

The way a letter
wide & perfumed
dropped a gleam
on her cheek
a stolen heaven

*

Ebby

Bored in the motherland
an overstuffed sunset
loses six
dress sizes

(idling techniques at the mouth
loose transposition of water ballet)

*

Tizzy

They show their minds to doctors
splayed pictorial
abroad in her brain
waiting for the fainting sickness
all doors ajar

*

Bet

None die every day
or get too big
for their pantalettes
not even the clocks age
this time of year

*

Lizard

Who adopts the slightest
accents of pedigree
to effect the luxury
of being on top
no matter how high
the dirt climbs

*

Batty

Basking with breakfast
the sated earth loosens
its belt for a long sigh
& bloom

he rides on someone’s cot
slips off with the sun
covering the distance with crickets’ song
ample oil for her
& missteps cannot befall
her little thrilled wheel

*

Belles

The group in their puffs
regular enough to be a flock
at the end of stupor
the good natured room
elects them centerpiece
of this place
& is cheerful again


Elizabeth McDaniel (AKA Lizzy) is a New York poet. She is currently completing her MFA at the New School and when available is one of our best babysitters .

Three Poems by Fernando Quijano III










snapshot

Staring
at the only photograph
I have left, Easter—your head
wrapped neatly in a paisley
scarf, alabaster skin set
off by the scarlet of your top,
all 5’ nothing of you dwarfing
over the 3 of us, [how small
we were, and how as big
as the world you seemed to us
back then] holding JoJo’s fragile
little hand—JoJo, in his blue denim
overalls with a strap dangling
off his shoulder and his Buster
Brown do, free hand gripping
one link of the chain link—your other
arm held hard against KiKi’s heart—
KiKi, with her baby doll dress & her baby doll
smile & her white knee highs— and
there I am, the Little Man all grown
up at 8 or 9 or whatever, hair,
as always, waving wildly in the wind,
stylin’ in my plaid polyester belted lounge
lizard jacket, with matching bell
bottom bottom, foot propped
up, arms spread like I owned
the world like I knew I did;
all of us there, at the base
of Lady Liberty, Manhattan &
its now extinct towers barely
bursting through the fog, celebrating,
not God, not Jesus, not life, nor liberty,
nor the pursuit of happiness, but
love: the love that we could squeeze
out of this fucked up family that we
shared, that we accepted for better
of for worse, or for worse than that
because how can we forget those times?

I stare
at this, the only
photograph I have
left, & I imagine
the others, the ones
I don’t have, the ones
lost, the ones destroyed, even
the ones that never existed,
like the picture I never
took of you during one
of your dazed for days days,
lounging & lost in your
euphoria, hiding from problems
I didn’t, still don’t quite,
understand, like the picture
I never took of you bruised,
battered & beaten by
whatever flavor of the month
macho-sick monster you were
sampling, like the picture I never
took the day you cashed your
first paycheck, leaving the drugs,
the drink, the drunks & the drama
packed away neatly with your past,
or like the picture I never took
of you bloated, bleeding & bleached
on that hospital bed, your past
unpacking itself to prevent
your progress,
your present,
your presence…
your life briefed
down to vital signs & bad
mistakes you had already paid for
with interest.


Orange Eye

I don’t have to write
this poem
it writes itself
how could it not?
At ten
the monarchs come to feed
on the purple orange eyes
outside
the kitchen window
as I wash dishes
monarchs & bugs that look
like little hummingbirds
fan tails and all
buzzing bud to bud
to suck on the sweet nectar

At three
the brothers come
butterflies wearing tiger skins
with iridescent blue
spots for wings
dangling upside down
with their black
winged cousins
to catch
the undersides of the buds
that previous bug
gourmands have missed
The tigers patiently probe
each bud
with their probosci
while the jet
butterflies flutter
frenetically before moving
on, looking for the easy meal
I could wash this dish
for days
I don’t have to write
this poem
The Universe wrote it
for me
long ago.


Villalba

A shallow little thing—
the river behind abuelita’s
house, barely deep
enough to wade in,
to slam our clothes
clean against rocks

Except when the hurricanes
came, we would have to
gather the chicken & geese
and stow them in the basement
praying that the great brown surge
carrying cows & cars with
equal ease would not
devour our fowl anyway

How far does it go?
I asked mi hermano—
Don’t know, but I hear
that upstream
the catfish get so big
you can wrestle them
out of the water—
and so we set out,
on a day free
of hurricanes, to find that place
where the river began

How far had we walked
before we realized our folly
as the current grew stronger,
a Lucha Libre wrestler shoving
us around, knocking us down
refusing us a glance under
his golden mask?
And the catfish?
Just as we believed, we saw
one navigating the current
more easily than we could,
its whiskers as long as it was

I pounced, thinking, perhaps
I can have at least this
one pleasure; rocks
in my hands,
nothing more.

Fernando Quijano III is the Vice President of the Maryland Writer’s Association & author of From the Bottom Up, an op-ed column featured on theurbantwist.com. His work has been featured in Welter & Smile Hon, You’re in Baltimore. An excerpt from his unpublished novel, Forever, Lilith was included in the Apprentice House anthology Freshly Squeezed. He has been featured at the Baltimore Book Festival, Stoop Storytelling, & The Signal on WYPR. In his spare time, Fernando volunteers to lead workshops for Writing Outside the Fence, a program for the ex-offender community, as well as at the Brock Bridge Correctional Facility. Fernando was recently awarded a B grant for his writing by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund.

Three Poems by Bruce Jacobs


THE BLACK ADVERTISING COPYWRITER
AUDITIONS FOR POLITICAL DRAMA

All he has to do, she says,
is pretend that he’s a Vietnam vet
and that she’s Japanese.

She’s marked his lines with bullets.
His character asks hers,
“Where are you from?”
She pauses, says, “Chicago.”
He says, “No. Before that.”
She says, “Ohio.” He says,
“No. Your parents. The ocean.”
She says, “San Francisco,”
then hands him the rice,
his cue to flash back
to the nine-year-old girl
who blew off his right arm
with a grenade in a bowl.

“I’ve never had dinner with a psychologist
who writes plays,” he says.
“Wait a minute,” she says in Japanese,
“that’s not in the script.”
“Sure it is,” he says. “After the rice.
I exhibit Post-Uncle Ben Stress Disorder.
You suggest that I write commercials
until I recall my own brand name.
Then the waiter hands me your bill
for eighty-five dollars.”

She tells him to stay in character,
close his eyes, come closer,
imagine giving her a piggyback ride
through a muddy creek. Her tiny toes
skirting the cold. His hands
on her body, feeling for grenades.
He follows her orders across her skin.
“Good, good,” she murmurs.
“Now call out my name.”
“Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben,” he says.
“No,” she says. “Before that.”

His mouth opens, an empty bowl
held by small brown fingers.

–Bruce A. Jacobs

_________________


THE BLACK ADVERTISING COPYWRITER
DRESSES FOR THE THEATER

The playwright explains
how she would like him:
Oxford shirt, Wrangler denims,
cowboy boots with silver heels.

She unfurls the smooth shirt
like a curtain, praises its weave
against her skin, tells him
if she were a client,
she’d admire his presentation.

With the mirror to her back,
she is not Japanese.
She calls the woman in glass
“the way I look,”
like a tulip facing itself in water,
a rumor of liquid pastel.

The black advertising copywriter
nods, having been addressed
as “Yo, boss” by store clerks,
and quizzed about malt liquor
by people for whom
he provides a black friend.

He fastens six pearl buttons,
runs a zipper along her spine,
just for the moment,
since he knows
in late morning, she will lean
across cream sheets, a woman

who is not Japanese,
wearing the white shirt
of a black advertising copywriter
off her tawny shoulders,

and he will pull percale about his hips
exactly like a kimono,
ask her if she likes the way he looks
enough to walk with him through mirrors.

– Bruce A. Jacobs

___________________


MAGIC

Makes no sense. This late at night,
a little girl in sneakers wielding
a stick? Three feet of hollow prod, alley bamboo,
one wooden tap and each kid runs.
Crazy is contagious.

She flaunts the wand like dime-store jewelry,
treasure of the moment, trigger-ready
in case of need for sorcery as they pass by my stoop,
knowing I could be anybody, hands in my pockets like that.
Her brown face bolts at me, pops me with a “Hi!”
They billow laughter up the street:
“You talked to him – talked to that man – you so bold.”

It’s crazy. Taking potions literally,
casting my bones on sooted marble,
believing bulrushes can push through concrete
and shelter babies left in alleys.
I want to tell her that her world
is reed and stone. She ought to
learn construction. One cannot trust
the way things work in moonlight.

It’s crazy. Making games with strangers,
playing where she’s not supposed to,
a black girl shaking giggle sticks into the night.

– Bruce A. Jacobs

_______________________


Bruce A. Jacobs is a poet, author, musician, and former advertising copywriter. His books of poems are SPEAKING THROUGH MY SKIN (Michigan State University Press) and CATHODE RAY BLUES (Tropos Press). His latest nonfiction book is RACE MANNERS FOR THE 21st CENTURY (Arcade Publishing). His work has appeared in dozens of poetry journals and anthologies, and he has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, and other networks. He plays drums, poems, and saxophone, and he lives in Baltimore. His blog on race and politics is http://aliasbruce.typepad.com, his poetry blog is http://agonist.org/diary/bruce_a_jacobs, and his Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/BruceAJacobs1.

Three Poems by Rita Stein


Dr. Jane


Shallow breaths. Present. Static.

Technicolor mammograms.

I am
not the one
to run in
and
save the day.

It’s not safe to have company at the breakfast table.

Not safe to quibble on the platform.

No one ever wows the clown.

A surreal animation knocks on the door.

The beauty of the apple
is its refracted sense of imagery.

You could go blue or ghost or funhouse.

I don’t know that there is
any way around this.
A pot of coffee
and all the cream it takes to shut you up.

No one ever wows the clown.

Not safe to try.


What Was (Valerie’s Apt.)

What was my favorite city-
San Jose-first
time in California,
all that walking and
warm nights,
a little cocaine
and mild
propositions

After flooding
a friend’s bathroom
Dan White
committed suicide
We traveled to Santa Cruz
to ooh and aah

It’s like
gas drilling
You leave
every substance
you love
every particle
It all turns up again
as reconstituted water

Nightime.

Wearing
red
shoes

The trees are
lined up for sale
It’s dreadfully
easy
It makes the city
smell brilliant,
irresistible,
unbelievably so


3rd Street Anecdote


The floor opens up in the middle
Suddenly air, the enormity of it

Over and over, a clarinet refrain,
like love, sweet and foul

This December day, wet snow

Reading under a blanket,
no heat

Violins now, and a coronet
Feels less dangerous in here

Erik Satie is being announced

I find myself enjoying
what I don’t like
A reluctant orgasm of a sort
Who’s performing here, I wonder

Snow resting on the ground
Cat on the balcony across
The quiet is so fragile

Packing to leave
Threw out stinky soup
Examined a soft spot on the wood floor

We take a break from this,
say goodbye


Rita Stein is fending off a cat while posting poems. She created 811.54 to post poems from friend and foe. Rita is a middle school librarian in Brooklyn.

Thad Rutkowski
Haywire
Starcheone Books, 2010
http://www.starcherone.com/thad.html


In 2006 a colleague of mine suggested I go to see a poet who was reading at a garden in New York’s East Village. While there I had the fortune of seeing Thad Rutkowski read from his work and I have been following him ever since.
Rutkowski’s writing evokes a sense of longing and dry wistfulness that draws me to his writing over and over again. Haywire, his current novel, presents a fictionalized biracial teenager who navigates a complicated family and social terrain. Using lean deadpan prose, Rutkowski briskly moves the reader along in tightly constructed vignettes that surprise, entertain and disturb.
A powerful example of entertaining disturbance is in the vignette titled “In Cars.” The boy next door invites the narrator to his clubhouse. After being provided with an easy password and given a nickname, the narrator is told that he must pass an admission test. His hands and feet are tied with telephone wire. The neighbor unbuckles the narrator’s pants saying, “If you ever get caught by our enemies, they may de-pants you, like this. When that happens, you have to know what to do.” Then an adult voice calls out and after reading for a while the neighbor releases the narrator and this portion of the vignette melts away.
We follow the narrator through the tension in the household and glimpse the father’s dark temper, somewhat sexualized fixation on the daughter, and ultimately his death. There’s really no overt sentimentality here and when the second part begins the narrator has moved on to college and the vignettes depict a shift from adolescence to a more mature adolescence. Thus we see college angst, sexual fetish awareness and experimentation, drug use and an indirect search for meaningful connection.
One of the strengths of this book is the humor, which is interwoven sometimes as irony, sometimes is very direct and sometimes just catches the reader off guard. There is an exquisite vignette in which he and his college roommate begin to grow a marijuana plant and they set the apartment on fire. As they and the others are evacuated from the premises, his roommate explains, “We were cooking, preparing a feast, and things got out of hand.” Yes, a delicious herbal feast.
The novel seems to speed up after that episode and we voyeuristically enter the vignettes that present the narrator’s search for ropes, string, harnesses, binding, that is, his fetish voice matures.
“I didn’t ask my guest about protection from HIV or other STDs. I didn’t take responsibility. Basically, I acted recklessly.” This brief laconic statement illuminates a cold hard truth of youth and the hunting down of experience. This is why Rutkowski’s writing calls me back repeatedly. There are no apologies or grand evasive gestures. Nestled throughout the text are honest yet fractured conversations among the siblings.
The narrator engages with his psyche as he tries to be in the world. There are absurdities, love, fear, racism, sex, growth, marriage, child rearing and wonder.
“All I wanted was some affection, a leg over mine while I slept, a kiss. I got both, which was fine, and the kiss, with a tongue that was tentative, almost hidden.” And this is what Thad Rutkowski does so well, writing stories within a story using language that not only entertains but also draws out what is often hidden, sometimes painful and always thought provoking.


Rita Stein
December 2010

Three Poems by Esther Louise


show time


there are ways to walk
this chalk line without
losing balance, smearing,
or the need to hold
a hand that is always
ready and waiting.
how could i ever
believe in more than the
prophecy made before
rebirth? yet, i came anyway,
without that hat, once green,
now faded. just can’t seem
to get back into this seat
of everyday living. it’s too
much, this waiting for not
knowing and knowing is
never what i desire, even if
i knew exactly what to expect.
the beginning always says,
abraham had no vision of
land flowing with milk
and honey, yet he and
wife were willing to
travel far to what
would be shown
after arrival. what trust
in not knowing! just a
hunch led them on.
how many times do
i walk this road, never
knowing what is around
next corner until last
corner is no more?
this never makes small
awe of expecting beyond
any ability to ask or hope.
one blessing coming out
this way is my being ready
for anyhow. life has no
script that can’t be changed
just before curtain time.
i see ropes pulling and
characters in place.
one could almost hear
applause.


the road to me


how would i have known
when the wind speaks
unless someone translated?
who would have known
that going on meant becoming.
to speak of you still chills
the soul, making goosebumps
counter productive.
who would have known
that one score years, less one,
seems like more, seems like more.
who would have known
those first conversations
were so spiral, so circular in nature,
always returning to the point,
so self lost and god delusive.
who would have known
that today would come answering
all questions, making yesterday
so necessary, so more the prerequisite
of a need to must travel through
samaria to reach jerusalem
in time for crucifixion,
on time for resurrection.
who would have known
that night makes light possible
or that moon is always mirror,
or that there is never here.
who would have known
that without you, i would not be me.


a mother’s tale


it was not a mirror
showing me to me.
nor was it water
with a ripple of my face.
not the name they call me,
nor the ring of a phone.
in the valley,
along the curb,
inside this tear
that washes my face,
that’s where i saw me.
a journey’s day away,
a yesteryear, not recognizable
in this moment. it was so clear
to me then. there were five,
running and playing,
making noise inside these
memories of their childhood,
calling me the first word
they learned before
the world taught them
how to shape new words.
now i listen for the remaining
four who still remember
the first word
they spoke and call
me when it comes to mind.
i recall each and
every birth, and
the one that left this way:
twenty years after
spanning a boom,
a twelve-year babymaking,
giving me more than
a dozen plus a score
of living along this highway
before death took my wind,
making my sail limp,
my smiles capsized
and laid below the floor
where dust caught
my image to broadcast
it along the centuries
of mothers, losing
one of their own.
i am not the first
nor last to see
one come out of me,
calling me ma
and never to hear
that voice again.
i am not alone.
there is a hood of us,
a club of sorts,
we come all sizes,
color is no descriptor
nor tongue a division.
we recognize one another.
we go out to meet the
newly inducted.
we wait for others to leave
and approach with our
tale of woe.
some shun us and avoid us
because we make long
shadows in cities of stones.
we wear missing faces.
we hug empty clothes
and swallow the hardest lump.
we are the mothers of the slain,
the laid to rest. the survivors
in a land, recalling when
their voices rang out
in joyful play.




Esther Louise

Born: Brooklyn, NY
Family: Divorced, mother of five, grandmother of three.
Occupation: Retired School Librarian.
Anthologies:Bum Rush the Page, A Def Poetry Jam (Random House, 2001),Confirmations (Quill Books, 1983)
Journals:American Rag, Bopp, City, Essence, Freshtones, Obsidian

Three Poems by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright


MADE IN KHARTOUM

Locked in the clock factory running out of time
The gate welded shut with a human torch
The Kooks “just don’t care — do do, dit di-dit dit”
I wake up exiled from immediacy
My eyes burning in Emily Brontë’s looking glass
Dire pleasures Hereabouts
A thousand friends, not too many
Hellbent on making a punctilious mess
Amid a welter of bruising wink shudders
CRY LIKE A TEENAGE ROBOT
Row on, my Myrmidons, the shore is a cheap toy
A fighting chance to star in a marathon of love
Where the screech owl meets the squeaking gurney
Gryphon wings shed hieroglyphs in the wind

MADE IN LHASA

The artist needs to whittle out a forest
Ebony, calabur, ash and jacaranda
Become grafted to crisscross limbs
I need to hang the light from my tongue
Re-enter a new version of the past
Fusebound to a white-scar splice
The croak hinges of my throat crack
Black anthem of the veined runway
This is where they’ll finally bring you
Place of the gods where Padmasambhava
(born on a lotus pad on Lake Dhanakosha)
pinned down the earth demoness
Dancing with the nickled silence
Once more to center stage, whales in space

MADE IN LILIPUT

Dear Emily, I am writing to say this is a forgery
A freak squall blown up suddenly
Dear Emily, now we are entanglement
Dear Emily, a spooky correlation-spike
Dear Emily, oil futures up this morning
Dear Emily, the wind designs our entropy
And jugglers project our distension, Emily dear
Dear Emily, on the site of the abject joy
Where we build, dear Em, the dam of dreams
You alone are preapproved moodswing bingo
Dawn’s juicy kiss plastered to your mug
More rope, anyone?
Let us dance on all fours, Emily
Like a reckless pookah caught in the grille



Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is a poet, artist and publisher. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and has recently been included in a half dozen group shows. His website is www.livemagnyc.com